The present invention relates generally to the field of product displays and, in its most preferred embodiments, to the field of apparatus and methods for point of sale product displays.
The point of sale purchase of products through impulse buying by consumers represents a large volume of sales for many product manufacturers. As a result, many manufacturers have come to rely almost exclusively on the sale of their products at the checkout counters of grocery stores, drug stores, and convenience stores. These manufacturers have simply discovered that impulse buying stems from at least two basic factors. First, at many stores, consumers often spend a great deal of time waiting in line to check out. Second, while they wait in line, consumers can be enticed into impulsively purchasing a product if the product is appealingly displayed at the right location. Therefore, manufacturers seek to locate clever product displays on the checkout counter or in areas immediately adjacent to the checkout counter where consumers wait in line.
Since many manufacturers have made the same discoveries, store owners and managers are bombarded with a large number of manufacturers who wish to display their products for sale in the limited amount of space on and around checkout counters. Of course, the owners of the stores typically receive a percentage of the profit generated from sales of the products through consignment, placement fees, or outright sales. Store owners, therefore, strictly allocate checkout counter space for product displays to maximize the profit per square foot of space. Such strict allocation places checkout counter locations for product displays at a premium and pits manufacturers against one another in a never-ending battle to acquire prime checkout counter space for their displays.
Problems inherent in the currently available product display technology serve to exacerbate the struggle among manufacturers for prime checkout counter space in which to showcase their products for consumers. Typically, product displays are constructed from thick, heavy plastic or opaque cardboard and once constructed, have fixed dimensions and hence, a fixed geometric shape. Vertical space is often poorly used and due to their construction, the product displays cannot usually be modified or stacked without a rack to improve space utilization. As a result, store owners and managers are often prevented from placing many product displays on the checkout counter because their size and shape cannot be changed and as constructed, they simply consume premium space that may be better utilized for hotter-selling products. In the event that a product display is placed on a checkout counter, the fixed size and shape of current product displays may constrain the number of ways that a store owner or manager can aesthetically arrange the multitude of displays that must reside on the checkout counter.
Unfortunately for store owners and managers, the size of a product display is often determined by the underlying way in which a manufacturer utilizes current product display technology. To minimize the cost of display construction, many product manufacturers typically build a display and place it in a store with the intent that the display will remain in the store for a long period of time as a semi-permanent fixture. A route person is then assigned to visit the store periodically and refill the display with product. Because the route person is usually responsible for a number of product displays at different stores and generally cannot check on each display daily, the displays must hold enough product to meet estimated consumer demand between visits by the route person. However, since consumer demand is difficult to estimate accurately, product displays are often larger and hold more product than necessary so that the display does not become empty before the route person returns to replenish the display with product. Therefore, due to the way in which current product display technology is utilized, the product display ends up occupying valuable checkout counter space to store product that probably belongs in a warehouse.
In addition to the size and shape problems related to current product display technology, product manufacturers must also employ route persons to perform the task of replenishing product displays as discussed above. Therefore, manufacturers are faced with the underlying costs of employing route persons either as direct or contract employees. These employment costs, of course, reduce the profits derived from the very impulse purchasing that the manufacturers seek to induce with their product displays.